Arboreal Rats go Offline; Next up: Mano a Mano With the Wily Possum

Tomorrow, supposedly, my new hunting knife arrives. Anticipation is high. Because getting a new knife will bring me boundless joy? No, it’s just that waiting for things way too long makes them seem more important than they are.

It will be nice to have a good sheath knife, so I’m not going to knock it too much, but I wish it had arrived sooner. I will have one to two days of squirrel hunting, post-knife, before the door slams shut. If I were to kill 4 squirrels, I would be doing great, and I am more likely to get two or less.

I have to find something new to kill. I can kill turkeys as of March 17, but I don’t have a good feeling about it. I don’t think there are many around here. I have spent a lot of time in the woods, and I have never seen turkey poop. I’ve seen a metric ton of bear poop, but no turkey poop.

Today I saw a van-sized pile of something resembling coon poop. I’m familiar with coon poop because they pooped in my pool back in Dade County. This looked like coon poop, but the scale was wrong. Coons poop like beagles, but this was closer to the size of German shepherd poop. I don’t think it was dog poop, because I have never seen a loose dog here, and it had little coon crumbly bits in it. Like granola. Like hippie food. It doesn’t look like Internet photos of coyote or bobcat turds.

If it came from a coon, something is seriously wrong. Either the coon is morbidly obese, or it’s 5 feet tall.

I need to kill coons whenever possible, because there is nothing good about them at all. They do nothing but cause misery. They’re cute and all that. Don’t care. They have to go.

I can put coons on my kill list for the rest of the year, because they have no season. Even the state of Florida hates them.

I can kill possums, too, but that’s about as challenging as shooting a speed bump. It’s like playing Jeopardy against Wolf Blitzer and Vivica Fox.

I haven’t tried it, but they say you can actually chase a possum down and grab it. I feel sorry for them, because they’re ugly and have no self-esteem. They take dumps on my porch, and there are probably other bad things they do. The horse people around me might be glad to see them go, because they give an obscure disease to horses. It’s hard to get motivated to shoot possums, but I suppose I could find it in me.

Skunks. I did not know skunks were bad, but I learned that they carry rabies. That begs the question: if I shoot one, can I skin it? I don’t want to get rabies.

Is rabies a good enough reason to shoot skunks? Maybe it’s a reach. I haven’t heard a lot of stories about people getting skunk rabies and biting their kids.

Maybe we should use T-shirt cannons to fire angry skunks with rabies into extremist mosques on Fridays. Not sure those guys would notice rabies, though.

Armadillos! They dig holes and annoy people. They carry leprosy, believe it or not. Some people eat them anyway. I can’t eat leprosy, even if it’s dead. That’s a dealbreaker. Do I have a legitimate need to kill armadillos? I’ll have to check.

Yes, I do have to kill armadillos. They threaten pipes and foundations.

I’ve found a bunch of burrows on this property. I don’t know what lives in them. They are not large enough, nor do they smell badly enough, to contain hippies. I want to find out what lives in them.

My trail camera arrived today, so I have a great opportunity to film the burrows and check out the residents. Right now, the camera is in the back yard. I want to find out if the bears are visiting. I have this neurotic idea that they waddle in after I go to bed and dance in a big circle under the moon.

How can there be so much bear poop on my property when I haven’t seen a single bear? But it has to be bear poop. Something like that couldn’t come from anything else. It’s huge. Again, hippies can be ruled out.

Maybe big fat ones, like Wavy Gravy or Rob Reiner…

It must be a coon. What else could it be? Maybe it has diverticulosis or some other illness that expands the colon.

Wild pigs are worse than the Viet Cong, but I have never seen one, so I don’t know if there is any point in trying to kill them.

I am not sure there is an important reason to kill bobcats, but it’s an option.

I can kill all the otters I want, but where would I find them?

Okay, let’s see. What should I definitely put on the kill list?

1. Turkeys
2. Coyotes
3. Coons
4. Pigs
5. Armadillos
6. Rabbits

Possibles:

1. Bobcats
2. Skunks
3. Crows
4. Poodles
5. Possums

I know “poodles” shouldn’t be in there. My hands just typed that automatically because it made so much sense.

I’m reading that possums may actually be helpful, apart from the constant porch-crapping.

It’s very hard to get good advice on what to kill. The Internet is full of extremist hippie loons who will happily tell you every revolting animal known to man is beneficial. “Don’t be so quick to shoot that rattlesnake in your daughter’s nursery! Rattlesnakes eat insects and other pests so you won’t have to buy evil pesticides made by Trump-hat-wearing stormtroopers who read the Bible and think men can’t have babies.”

America is being taken over by complete idiots who think we should never kill anything. “The animals were here first.” So what? We’re more important than they are. Conservatives are, anyway. Not sure about hippies.

I don’t know how many bears I’m more important than, but I’m thinking at least 7. This doesn’t include bears that can ride a bicycle in a Chinese circus while holding an umbrella. They would obviously be worth more.

When I go out in the ocean to fish, I find fish who were there first. I kill them anyway. Being in a place first doesn’t necessarily entitle you to anything. How come “They were here first” doesn’t apply when Americans are trying to eject illegal aliens?

The squirrels I’ve been killing were here first, and I will be here last, in my plastic Adirondack chair in the backyard, sipping a tasty beverage and texting my friends. That’s how things are supposed to be.

I have to find stuff to kill, not because I’m bloodthirsty and sadistic, but because you can’t learn to hunt without practice. You can’t take 9 months off every year and expect to be any good.

I’m thinking of getting a tree stand. This is an insane platform you put in a tree. Tree stands have built-in chairs. No recliners, unfortunately. Maybe that will happen eventually. The kind of tree stand I like comes with a ladder. You sit with your rifle 16 feet off the ground, and animals, being not smart, don’t think to look up and spot you. As a result, you can sit in the sky with a cooler next to you and rain destruction on them.

They say squirrels poop on tree stands, which is yet more reason why they deserve no quarter. But I digress.

I wonder if electrifying a tree stand is legal. That’s one way to find out how far a squirrel can jump.

Tree stands are commonly used for killing deer, but there is no reason why you can’t use one to kill other stuff. I think it would be a great move in my location, because it would allow me to shoot downward. That would make shooting safer, and it would mean forgoing fewer opportunities. If I had shot at every available squirrel I’ve seen in the last two weeks, I would be eating squirrel for dinner every day.

I have two weeks to get ready for turkeys. I hope I get at least one. After turkey season ends, I’ll be forced to persecute the wretched inhabitants of the lowest level of animal society. I will feel like a vampire that eats rats. I will feel the way UFC fighters and Olympic wrestlers feel the first time they have to wrestle Triple H. “Glad mom’s not watching tonight.”

I’ll let you know if I pick up anything on the trail cam tonight. I really hope Rob Reiner isn’t in town.